Creative Capital artists Aliza Nisenbaum (2025 Creative Capital Awardee), Jeffrey Gibson (2005 Creative Capital Awardee), Nick Cave (2002 Creative Capital Awardee), and Theaster Gates (2012 Creative Capital Awardee) are among the artists commissioned to create major new works for the Obama Presidential Center’s campus-wide public art program in Chicago.

Their works form part of an ambitious initiative bringing more than 28 site-specific commissions to the Center, spanning monumental sculpture, murals, textiles, and immersive installations. Together, these works will animate spaces across the 19.3-acre campus and reflect the Center’s broader vision of art as a catalyst for civic participation, dialogue, and community.

In the Museum’s main lobby, Nick Cave and Marie Watt present This Land, Shared Sky, their first collaborative artwork. The monumental multimedia textile installation combines beaded nets with sculptural jingle elements, drawing together Indigenous and Black cultural traditions in a meditation on movement, sound, resilience, and shared experience.

In the Library’s main reading room, Aliza Nisenbaum’s sweeping mural, Reading Circles / Weaving Dreams / Seeding Futures, portrays scenes of civic life within a public library. Centering storytelling, knowledge-sharing, and collective memory, the work presents the library as a vital space for gathering and imagining the future. The installation also marks the public premiere of Creative Capital-supported work by Nisenbaum.

Jeffrey Gibson’s Yet With a Steady Beat features 17 circular prints referencing political buttons and drums—recurring forms within his multidisciplinary practice—while Theaster Gates has created a major new installation for the Center’s Hadiya Pendleton Atrium celebrating photographic material from the Johnson Publishing Company image archive and the Howard Simmons photographic collection.

Opening in 2026, the Obama Presidential Center celebrates the legacy of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama while creating a new cultural and civic destination on Chicago’s South Side. With a museum, public library, gardens, athletic facilities, and expansive public grounds, the campus brings art into direct conversation with the Center’s commitment to democracy, community, and public life.

The presence of Creative Capital artists across the campus reflects the enduring impact of artists supported by Creative Capital—and the ways their practices continue to shape consequential cultural spaces and public conversations nationwide.